We were saddened to learn of the death on Friday, September 29, of Joseph Bates, M.D., M.S., who served on our faculty and at the veterans’ hospital for over three decades, including twenty-one years as Vice Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Bates went on to make remarkable contributions as a leader at the Arkansas Department of Health and in the UAMS College of Public Health over the next twenty-five years.
Dr. Bates earned his medical degree from the College of Medicine in 1957 and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at UAMS before joining the faculty in 1963. He served as Chief of the Pulmonary Disease Section at the McClellan Veterans Medical Center from 1965 until his appointment as Chief of the Medical Service there in 1968.
Over the next thirty years, Dr. Bates taught and mentored medical students, residents, and fellows, earning deep respect for his commitment to superb patient care and his notoriously high expectations for aspiring physicians. Dr. Bates was an exceptional teacher and became a valued mentor for many. He was also keenly focused on recruiting faculty and leaders to UAMS.
Dr. Bates maintained a successful research program and was internationally known for breakthroughs in the understanding of the transmission of tuberculosis and for his instrumental work in the development of community-based treatment of tuberculosis, which helped many patients afflicted with the disease to stay out of sanitoriums. Read one of his early works, a descriptive public health study on the spread of tuberculosis. Only a few months before his death, Dr. Bates published a book, Stalking the Great Killer: Arkansas’s Long War on Tuberculosis, which details Arkansas’s historical struggle with the disease and his work to understand its spread and shift the treatment paradigm. Dr. Bates was elected President of the American Thoracic Society in 1988 and President of the American Lung Association in 1994.
Over the years, Dr. Bates grew more involved in public health. He once said, “In the first part of my career, I took care of patients one at a time. Now I think of all Arkansans as my patients.” In 1998, he joined the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) as Director of the Tuberculosis Control Program. In 2005, he was named Deputy State Health Officer and Chief Science Officer.
Dr. Bates worked with other leaders to establish the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) in 1998, combining the resources of UAMS, ADH and other partners to develop and advocate for health policy. An early key initiative focused on Arkansas’s multimillion-dollar share of the national tobacco settlement and ensuring that all of it was committed for health improvement.
Dr. Bates also partnered with others to establish the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health in 2001. He and his colleagues later campaigned for the Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006, which banned smoking in workplaces and public areas. Dr. Bates went on to champion the fluoridation of water systems in Arkansas, which was signed into law in 2011, and many other pivotal public health measures.
Along with his work at ADH, Dr. Bates returned to the College of Public Health as a Professor of Epidemiology and Associate Dean for Public Health Practice in 2001. He continued to mentor students – including medical students pursuing a dual degree in public health – for the rest of his life.
Dr. Bates received many well-earned honors over the course of his long and distinguished career, including induction into the College of Medicine Hall of Fame in 2015 and an endowed chair established in his honor in the College of Public Health. ACHI honored him with the inaugural Dr. Tom Bruce Arkansas Health Impact Award in 2016.
Dr. Bates was preceded in death by his parents and his first wife, Patsy McGinnis Bates. He is survived by his wife, Donna Dudney Bates; children Patricia, Susan, Joseph Henry, and Elisabeth; Donna’s sons Will McNair and Hight McNair, and many grandchildren. Read Dr. Bates’s obituary.